Shallow Graves
by ThexOnexWhoxWanders
Summary: Summary: Arthur Morgan begins to question the path he's chosen in life and the man he's followed for so long. Eliza Hutcherson is just trying to live, or at least outlive her brother. An outlaw and a woman running from her past… they have more in common than they ever would have thought. Eventual Arthur/OC.


**A/N:** Quick note. While this story will definitely include events that have occurred in the game, I will be taking a lot of creative license. For example, I don't think we need to reread dialogue we've already heard before, or actually watch scenes play out all over again. If they're necessary for the story, they'll likely be mentioned but will have occurred off-scene. Some might even be cut out entirely. So while this story does follow some of the game's plot, it also has it's own in order to keep me [and probably you] interested.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Red Dead Redemption II or Rockstar Games. If I did… the game would've ended differently.

**Warnings**: This fic definitely takes the time period into account. In other words, it doesn't pretend that racism didn't exist (the civil war had only occurred about thirty years prior – which was obviously during some people's life times), or sexism (women had not yet achieved suffrage), as well as many, many other things that still haven't been solved today but permeated everyday life back then even more than they do now [at least more overtly in many cases]. Obviously if you played the game you're aware of these things, too. That I am including these things may possibly be a by-product of my studies, but I also think they're really important to address. So my warnings for the entire story include mentions of race or derogatory names [I must admit I do try to keep these to a minimum because they really disgust me for obvious reasons], mentions of lynchings and murders, mentions of sexual assault or rape, mentions or scenes with torture, as well as physical, emotional, and psychological trauma. I will do my best to include warnings for each chapter so you can be aware of these things before you read them.

**Chapter warning**: Mentions of hate crimes (lynchings). Murder.

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ONE

* * *

"My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder."

William Golding

* * *

1899

May

_The Western Frontier_

The tracks rumbled below her like the thumping of a great, iron heart. Each _clunk_ over the railway pushed the wooden back of Eliza's seat further into her spine, earning a scowl from the weary-eyed traveler. It would take days, maybe weeks, for her to work the kinks from her back after she arrived in Saint-Denis. For not the first time, she regretted the circumstances that had precluded her from first-class tickets and the luxury of spending the last twenty-four hours of travel in her own little cubby, with a padded bed, full service, and everything a woman could ever want.

Staring out the train's window for a distraction proved a fruitless endeavor, since as of the current moment, she was rustling through the middle of nowhere with not a single lamp or even moon to light the outside landscape. All she could see was pitch black for miles and miles, like a blanket of oil had settled over the world. Which was good, in its own way. She hoped to hide herself away in all that darkness.

Picking at the gloves that ran up to her elbows, Eliza sighed and thumbed the scars over the back of her right hand. They were corrugated, long, and if she were to study them without the protective barrier of the navy-blue gloves, ugly. A small price to pay, she supposed. Better to have ugly hands than her head entirely removed from her body.

"Arriving at Saint-Denis in fifteen minutes!" one of the attendants announced to her car, waking some of the light sleepers who had managed a bit of rest between this stop and the last and earning irritated glances from the others. Eliza, on the other hand, shifted in her uncomfortable seat with hope. Almost twenty-four hours of running away, and she was nearly there.

Back home, there was some talk, tongue-in-cheek and otherwise, that the remnants of the Western frontier held the final stretches of liberty in the country. Of course, it would sometimes seem that way in a city that was running headfirst into the twentieth century such as Detroit, not a single care in the world for rolling back time to stick to what her mother had termed _simpler living_. Trolleycars, cramped living quarters, vendors constantly shouting on the streets were the new lifeblood of the city, and Eliza had never known anything else.

Fifteen minutes later, when the train pulled up alongside the industrious looking town of Saint-Denis, Eliza felt some disappointment in her gut. Here, there were signs of civilization. Trolleycars just like the ones back home. Here, the streets were alive, even after the sun had set for the evening. After grabbing her small bag filled with all the necessities she had managed to stuff into it before making her escape, Eliza disembarked the train and took in her surroundings, a frown playing on her lips. After twenty-four hours of running west, she didn't much feel like she was in the west at all.

000

It hadn't taken long to learn that she needed to head further northwest, that her journey wasn't over just yet. Eliza had an ear for overhearing things, more than just your average gossip-girl at least, and had learned from many a source that the tiny towns and homesteads surrounding Saint-Denis on the left half of the compass were quiet enough for a girl like Eliza to seek out and settle down in, just for a while. But she had also learned that her fashionable short hair and city manner of dress would make her stick out like a sore thumb.

The hair she could do nothing about, except begin to grow it out once again. The clothes, on the other hand, she had easily replaced at a tiny shop nestled between a butcher and a printing press at the edge of the city. Gone were the elbow-length gloves she had grown so accustomed to over the years, replaced instead by more practical riding gloves that still managed to cover her scars, recognizable to anyone who might come looking for her.

The air here was thick with dust and grime and foul odors that wafted in from the swampland surrounding the little city. Saint-Denis, a place caught between two centuries: the nineteenth, an age of expansion and invention, a dying age, and the twentieth – the future and everything that might come with it.

As a rule, Eliza did not welcome the future with open arms. Not anymore. Not since she had seen what awaited her – or rather, what didn't. Women's suffrage was a bleak and formless thing, a dirty word, unfashionable and dangerous even in a 'forward-thinking' place of 'academia and science' like Detroit. It seemed to her that things would only get worse before they got better – if they ever even managed to get better.

Then there was the matter of her parents' deaths, leaving the entirety of the Hutcherson estate and company in the hands of her eldest brother, Daniel. Another change that beckoned forth ugly things, that had warped Eliza's once happy life into one of terror and uncertainty.

No, the future did not seem any brighter to her anymore. So if she needed to continue this journey westward, to hide herself among the other like-minded people clinging on to the past, she would. It was all about survival, now.

000

1899

May

_Valentine_

SEVERAL WEEKS LATER

Helena Richardson. That was her new name. Hard to get accustomed to, since she had been going by Eliza, 'Liza, Lizzie, or even just E her entire life. There was a certain charm to adopting a new name that she couldn't deny – a certain beauty in becoming someone else, even if it was only to the outside world – but there was a terrible melancholy attached to it as well. Not a single soul within a thousand miles knew Eliza as her true self. If she were to die in this already dying land, her tombstone wouldn't bear her own name. No one would ever know what befell her.

It was thoughts like these that allowed doubt to creep into her head. Maybe she was just being foolish. Maybe Daniel would understand – she couldn't marry a man she didn't love, no matter if it was 'good' for their late mother and father's business, for their legacy. Especially a man like Jameson Radcliff: a widow three times over, whose wives had officially died from tragic accidents and unofficially been taken by him.

If she could get Daniel to understand this, to make him see reason…

The scars mottling the back of her right hand reminded her that Daniel saw no reason. Was no different than Radcliff, himself. Cruel and terrifying.

So she found herself in some backwater place called Valentine, though there was little romance to the town. It boasted two saloons – apparently, quite the attraction in these dusty small towns – a general store, gunsmith, and even a doctor. It hadn't taken long to find work at the saloon tidying the place up, restocking the liquor on the shelf, and any other odds and ends the typically-absent owner wanted. Then to move out of the tiny hotel across the thoroughfare and into an apartment squeezed above the doctor's office, to begin eking out a living all on her own.

Of course, given the trajectory her life had taken thus far, that meant it wouldn't take long for all that hard work to go to waste.

It all started with a pair of men who barely had a full head of teeth between the two of them. Loud drunks, they were. And whatever they managed to slosh on the saloon's floor was Eliza's job to mop up, so she was less than thrilled by their presence. But things had been manageable for nearly an hour; the two loud-mouthed, prejudiced men had mostly kept their comments tame, eager to have the bartender refill their whiskeys without threatening to kick them out, to tell their war-stories from thirty-some years ago, back when they'd barely been boys.

The atmosphere noticeably changed when a young black man found a place at the bar, his rough-looking white friend quickly taking up residence beside him. As soon as the pair of old so-called war heroes caught sight of the new patrons, an almost animalistic tension descended on the room. Even Eliza, all the way in the corner, could sense the shift, and dread coiled tight in her belly. She knew what happened when racist folk got certain ideas in their heads – not to mention drunk racist folk with not a decent bone in their body.

Without realizing it, Eliza gripped her mop tighter and hovered closer to the bar, where she could hear one of the confederates call out to the young man.

"Hey, darkie! Whatchu think you're doin' in an establishment as fine as this one? Ain't they got another place for your kind?"

The young man's shoulders hunched up immediately. Before he could turn to face his harasser, though, his friend laid a heavy hand on his shoulder and nudged a shot of whiskey towards him. Still, the lack of reaction seemed to needle the two confederates.

Eliza felt sick. She remembered the night her brother had rounded up all his friends to lynch Martin Dujardin just for looking at her the 'wrong' way. The very same Martin Dujardin who had offered her sweet smiles every day when she bought the paper from him, who told her to keep her chin up whenever she looked particularly down, who had snuck a bright yellow flower into the folds of one of the papers to give to her, which she'd tended to for weeks until it had, regrettably, wilted. Martin, who had showed her kindness, and eventually love, when she had been so desperate and in need of it.

Martin, who wound up swinging from a tree right outside her bedroom window, sightless eyes staring terrified into her room.

"What, you don't speak English, darkie? Gotta have your man there translate for you or somethin'?"

They just wouldn't let it go. Eliza felt pure terror fill her veins – residual, perhaps, from what had happened to sweet Martin, but also for this young man here, this quiet young man who had done nothing but walk into a saloon housing a pair of die-hard racists. And what could she do about it?

This time, the young man didn't let his friend try to distract him. He focused his eyes on his harasser, fearless in a way Eliza envied, and said, "Nah, man. My friend here was just tellin' me what a bunch of backward, cousin-fuckin' fools a town like this draws in. Clearly, he was right."

Things happened quickly after that – one moment, the confederates were on the opposite side of the bar and the next they had shoved their way to the young black man, who stood to his full height now, annoyed that his friend towered like a shield in front of him.

"What'd you just say to me, boy?"

Surprisingly, it was his friend that spoke up. "Oh, I think you heard him all right. So maybe it's time you lot take yourselves elsewhere 'fore my friend here knocks the rest of your teeth out, ya hear me?"

"Naw, I ain't hearing you." Toothless #1 poked a finger into the blond man's chest with a sneer. "'Cause I wasn't talkin' to you. I was talkin' to the darkie cowerin' behind ya."

The blond chuckled. "Oh, he ain't cowerin'. I'm the one thing that stands between you and a long visit to the doc down the street, fella."

"Prove it. And get the fuck outta my way."

Eliza couldn't be sure who did what – if the young black man had had enough of people speaking on his behalf, if Toothless 1 or 2 had pushed past the strong blond – but fists began flying, tables toppled over, and glass shattered. It was a nightmare. And there she was, frozen in place, seeing two scenes at once: a body she had loved swinging from a tree and a bar full of mob-like anger, quickly descending into chaos.

Once it became clear that no one was leaving until blood was spilled, she took the blunt-end of the mop, crept up behind Toothless #2 who was currently grappling with Strong and Blond, and bashed it into the back of the redneck's head. He crumpled immediately, leaving the cowboy blinking up at her in surprise before he caught himself, lunged towards Toothless #1, who had the young man by his shirt collar and was throwing punch after punch into his already bruised and bloodied face. Grabbing the older man by the back of his jacket, the cowboy threw him to the ground, crouched over him… and beat the holy hell out of him.

Eliza stood back in shock. Sure, she was no stranger to violence – far from it. But the fury behind those punches, the anger etched into that man's face… That was something she had yet to see in her life, and something she would surely never forget.

Moments later, the law finally arrived to break up the fight. When the sheriff set his sights on the cowboy, knuckles bloodied from the beating he'd just handed out, face spotted with fresh bruises, Eliza knew he'd arrest the man on the spot, and his friend, no doubt.

She stepped forward without thinking about it, placing herself between the lawman and the cowboys. "It wasn't them," she insisted, nodding towards the two unconscious men on the floor. "Those two there – they threatened their lives. I saw it for myself, sir."

The sheriff – she had never managed to learn the man's name, despite already living in town for almost four weeks – glanced at her skeptically. In the end, she figured he didn't much care who started the altercation. He ordered his deputies to haul the unconscious men to the station down the street and have them locked up, but steadied a pointed look on the cowboys behind her.

"You're lucky the two of ya got a witness. The next time, you might not be so lucky."

In other words: _Get outta my sight and don't cause trouble here again_.

The blond cowboy picked his hat up from the glass-covered floor, dusted it off on his pants before replacing it on his head. He clapped his friend on the shoulder. "You all right there, Lennie?"

The man named Lennie bristled. Blood dripped from his nose, added to the mess on the saloon floor. "I don't need you fightin' all my battles, Arthur. I can handle myself." He shouldered past his friend and out the swinging doors, a slight limp to his gait.

Arthur, the blond cowboy, stared after him a moment with a furrowed brow. Before following, he caught Eliza's gaze and gave her a curt nod. "Sorry for the mess, ma'am."

Then he was gone, and Eliza was left to face a night of making the place presentable yet again for more of drinking, debauchery, and violence the next evening. She hadn't even realized that the bartender – a weasel of a man, in all honestly – had ditched the room as soon as the fight broke out like a coward, leaving her behind to fend for herself.

Gritting her teeth against the anger that threatened to surge in her belly, Eliza picked up her discarded mop and set to work cleaning, alone.

000

Eliza thought the nightmares about Martin's death were behind her. Since she'd moved to the frontier, they'd become less and less frequent until they'd stopped altogether.

But they were back. Late the next morning, she woke drenched in sweat, her hair sticking uncomfortably to her scalp and her sleeping gown clinging to her body, with the image of a bright yellow flower dripping blood from its stem left in her mind.

She went to work as soon as she managed her appearance. Keeping busy left no time to dwell on these things, she had found. Keeping busy helped her survive.

Of course, she wouldn't have gone to work that day had she realized who would come looking for her near closing that evening. It had been too easy to leave her entire messy life behind in Detroit – she knew someone would come looking for her, eventually. The Hutcherson family name was too well-known for her to slip away without raising some questions.

She just never imagined someone would catch up so quickly.

It was late into the evening; a moonless night. Most of the patrons had already headed back home with the final few trickling out the door now. The bartender was wiping down his countertop and taking stock of the liquor while Eliza cleaned tables, swept the floor, and generally tried making the place presentable once more. The bartender – Jeremiah, she had finally learned – didn't even bother to apologize for leaving her to that brawl the night before. Eliza got the impression he didn't care for her very much: she had, on more than one occasion, overheard him whisper to one patron or another about her silly city-girl hair.

As she was transferring mugs and beer bottles to the bar top to be dealt with later, Jeremiah huffed at her that the rest of the work to be done was hers. Didn't even spare a glance backwards as he left through the back door, headed Lord only knew where.

Eliza scowled after him. Sure, she hadn't exactly expected country folk to welcome her with open arms, but she certainly hadn't expected a weasel like Jeremiah to be so ungentlemanly to leave her alone – _again_. But dwelling on the matter would do her no good, so Eliza sucked up her pride, packed it deep down inside herself, and continued to tidy the place up before calling it a night.

After wiping down the last table, Eliza brushed her hands on her skirts and wondered if the hotel would let her draw a bath this late in the evening. She ducked behind the bar for a moment, grabbed her satchel off a hook, and flinched when she heard the saloon doors swing open.

Peering over the bar top from where she was half-bent, Eliza watched a man enter the saloon, a certain swing in his step, a brightness in his gaze, that spoke of trouble. Those clothes… a three-piece suit and a top hat. Those were city-slicker clothes. And by the way the man was glancing around the empty establishment, she knew he was here looking for someone.

What were the chances she could remain hidden behind the bar, that he would see nothing and no one and leave? Could she make it to the back door without being seen?

Her hand slipped into the deep pocket of her satchel, fingers curling around the ivory handle of the revolver daddy had given her once she'd turned eighteen. The damn thing had never been fired a single time, but she cared for it properly – it was a reliable weapon in a situation like this. She hoped.

If this even was a situation.

"Ah, miss. You know, I can see you hovering there, behind the bar." His voice was smooth and clear, accentless, unlike the locals, and filled with an amusement that was clearly at her expense. "You wouldn't happen to be Miss Eliza Hutcherson by chance, would you?"

There was no point crouching if he'd already spotted her. Rising to her full height and trying desperately to keep from fidgeting, Eliza kept her hand firmly on the revolver in her satchel, her body taut as a rope. With an edge to her tone, she replied, "No, sir, I would not be. And I'm deeply sorry, but we're already closed for the night."

A smile stretched on the man's pale face and the hairs on the back of Eliza's neck stood on end. He chuckled, a short, breathy thing that made her uncomfortable, and reached into the pocket of his suit jacket.

Eliza tensed, her fingers squeezing painfully around the revolver's handle, but the stranger held his hands up in a sign of peace, a small card now present. He smirked down at it and slowly approached the bar, his footsteps heavy and loud in the silence of the saloon.

"You see, Miss Hutcherson, I wouldn't have been inclined to believe you regardless. It's your hair that gives it away, you know." Then he flicked the little card around, revealing a pocket-sized portrait her mother had had taken of Eliza just a few years earlier. Her stomach dipped to her toes. "But the woman in this photo – who most certainly _is_ Miss Eliza Hutcherson – bears an uncanny resemblance to you, Miss…"

Her mouth was dry. She had to swallow thickly once, twice, before she managed to offer, "Richardson. Miss Richardson. And yes… it is a terribly uncanny resemblance. But I'm sorry, sir. I can't help you."

She intended to circle around the bar and make her way to the back entrance without a glance backward, but a firm hand on her arm stopped her dead in her tracks. Fear coursed through Eliza's veins, hot and heady, turning her knees to jelly. Her grip on the revolver was painful, now; her fingers were cramping.

Swinging her around, the stranger gave that eerie smile once again. "My instructions were to return you to Detroit straight-away, Miss, under any circumstances necessary. I'd rather not harm a woman, but…" He eyed her in a way that broadcasted he _certainly_ didn't mind harming a woman, at all. "Your brother is very desperate to see you home."

At the mention of Daniel, the fear pulsing through Eliza reached a pitch. It was a third presence in that room with her, hovering over her shoulder, whispering awful things into her ears. The scars on the back of her right hand itched terribly, a reminder of what her brother was capable of. And that had only been a punishment for a minor infraction. But running away… Getting all the way across the country, leaving everything behind…

It was her life that was at stake, now. Daniel would never forgive her for this.

She attempted to pull out of the man's grasp, but his hold was firm. In as steady a voice she could manage, Eliza informed him, "I'm sorry, sir, but you'll have to return empty-handed. I'd rather… well, I think I'd much rather die. _Here_," she added, hastily. "Than by the hand of my crooked brother."

Displeasure flashed across the stranger's features. "You see, Miss, I don't have much of a choice. It's either you or me, and I think you can understand that I'd much rather it be you."

_Either you or me. You or me. Youormeyouorme…_

Her fingers were still tight around the revolver. The man reached into his pocket and withdrew a set of handcuffs, and Eliza knew she had to act now or never.

Just as he was reaching for her other wrist, Eliza brought the revolver up and shot the man square in the face. As if to punish her, to draw out her horror at herself, time itself seemed to slow. The bullet struck the man in the forehead, off-center, and went straight through. Once he had crumpled to the floor, Eliza stared down at his body with her mouth agape, his blood speckling her face.

The hand holding the revolver began to shake spastically.

At that awful moment, the saloon doors opened again, though slower this time. They creaked with the uneasy and uncertain movement, and Eliza flinched, turned towards the entrance with her gun raised once more.

"Woah, woah, there," Blond and Strong from the other night held his hands up, weaponless, and stood still. "Woah, now. I'm not here to cause you no harm, miss." His eyes swept over the body on the floor, emotionless, like he was no stranger to cold-blooded murder, and it made Eliza's hands shake even harder.

She'd just killed a man. Murdered a man. _You or me._

"I… I couldn't let him take me," Eliza offered up as a lame explanation. Like this stranger would even understand something she didn't fully comprehend herself, just yet. "I couldn't."

"I know," the man told her softly.

"How? How could you possibly know something like that?"

Blond and Strong sighed deeply, his shoulders rising with the effort. With his hands still held up, he slowly began to approach her, his gaze never once leaving hers. There was some sort of strange comfort in that, almost. Comfort in not having to look down at her feet, to see the blood pooling around a body she had robbed life from.

_What have I done? What have I just done?_

"Miss," Blond and Strong said quietly – Arthur, she remembered suddenly, as if that mattered at all. His name was Arthur. That's what his friend had called him the night before. "You can lower the gun now, all right? I ain't gonna hurt you. But I reckon… Well, it seems to me that feller had it comin', the way he was touchin' you. I saw. But the law may not be so understandin' about that, you get me? Someone must've gone 'n fetched 'em by now. We've gotta move the body and be quick about it."

Move the body. Eliza could barely understand his words. Move the body? She had just murdered this man! Shouldn't this stranger, this Arthur, turn her in to the law? Wasn't that the right thing to do?

Finally within arm's length of her, Arthur reached out – slow, like she was scared, wild animal that could lash out any moment – and took the gun from her. Eliza didn't bother to fight it. All the fight had already left her, replaced by dread, guilt, and a deep sorrow.

Pocketing her revolver, the man named Arthur let his hands fall to his side and stepped into her line of sight once more, determined to make her see him, to make her listen. Lord only knew why.

"Listen, miss. Listen to me closely, now. A lawman is gonna come in here shortly, and I'm gonna move this body on outta here before that happens. When that lawman comes in, you tell him there was an altercation between two patrons, and one of 'em was shot. That'll explain all the blood. But you tell him you didn't see what happened much beyond that, and that the pair of 'em fled. All right?" His eyes were blue. A pale blue. Pretty. "Can you do that, miss?"

"Yes," she answered, her voice small, completely unlike herself, but now she had done something truly awful. Now, maybe, she _was_ completely unlike herself. "But why?"

The man named Arthur just seemed resigned. Tired, maybe. "Because," he said simply, "there are all sorts of good reasons to shoot a man, sometimes, and I reckon you had one."

Then he bent at the waist and hefted the body – the dead body, the lifeless man – over his shoulder, spared her a glance, and high-tailed it out the back of the saloon.

Moments later, a lawman arrived, just as Arthur had predicted. In an absent, uncertain voice, she told the man what Arthur had instructed her to. Maybe it was dumb luck or maybe it was the look of pure shock on her face, but either way, the deputy believed her.

She would live another day as a free woman. But at a terrible cost.

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**A/N**: A lot happened in this chapter! Hopefully you'll stick with me for the next one, which will have a LOT of Arthur/Eliza interaction in it and Arthur POV.

And please review if you want updates! I'm juggling several stories and aim to finish each of them... so reviews help me focus my energy.


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